Tiled Background Designer
July 17, 2008 1:38 AM   Subscribe

Tiled Background Designer is just a small, useful tool to create patterns. Experiment with pictures, colors, textures and transparency to get best result.
posted by Dave Faris (37 comments total) 73 users marked this as a favorite
 
Beautiful. I expect I will find uses for this in future projects.
posted by OwlBoy at 1:48 AM on July 17, 2008


oooh, that was fun - but I can't seem to activate my account. I wanna show off what I did. :)
posted by dabitch at 3:06 AM on July 17, 2008


Now this, I like.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 5:28 AM on July 17, 2008


i don't get it - how does one create their own patterns?
posted by mary8nne at 6:00 AM on July 17, 2008


I love this, thanks.

mary8nne, there are tabs across the top--use those to change the pattern, the background and foreground colors, and so on.
posted by interrobang at 6:08 AM on July 17, 2008


This is great!
posted by psychostorm at 6:18 AM on July 17, 2008


Very cool, but the interface is sort of sucky for linking purposes. If this works: here are mine, then right click on your name (if you are registered), and copy link location, then paste here to link to your patterns page.

Unfortunately, I don't see that there's any way to link to any one particular pattern.

But, def. fun!!
posted by taz at 6:29 AM on July 17, 2008


how does one create their own patterns?

The only thing thats missing is a tab to upload your own images, which even registering doesn't seem to let you do.
posted by Dave Faris at 6:31 AM on July 17, 2008


In the same category is http://www.k10k.org/pixelpatterns/
posted by marcelm at 6:33 AM on July 17, 2008 [1 favorite]


dang... I don't think that works. I just tried to do it with interrobang's page, and it just throws me back to the front page. I must be missing something? Surely there's a way to link to things? At least the individual galleries? Because, if not, that's kind of pooheaded.
posted by taz at 6:36 AM on July 17, 2008


This is great. Linking own images not working on Mac (no right click) especially since I'm a computer idiot. Suggestions?
posted by nax at 6:39 AM on July 17, 2008


I bet they don't really want you linking directly to the images, especially since they're backgrounds (bandwidth), but they really ought to let you link to your profile and a page of all your creations.
posted by Dave Faris at 6:42 AM on July 17, 2008


nax, doing a control-left-click will pull up right-click menus if you don't have a mouse with a right-click button on it.
posted by interrobang at 6:50 AM on July 17, 2008


This is neat!
posted by cashman at 6:58 AM on July 17, 2008


This is awesome. Is there a Home Depot plugin? I want a light olive papyrus-textured sage skull motif for the study.
posted by jimmythefish at 7:29 AM on July 17, 2008 [1 favorite]


I'm currently working on parametric texture generation in my academic life. Steerable pyramids are the neatest thing I've seen in a long time - you can give it a piece of a texture, and it'll (to varying degrees of success) give you "more" of that texture (where the "more" part tries to hold constant as many of the image statistics as possible (it doesn't just 'tile' the image - it's a lot more sophisticated than that).

For some examples (and to see where it does well/poorly), in the above link scroll down and click on some of the image thumbnails. What you're seeing: inside the yellow square is the original source texture. Everything outside that square was generated by the algorithm.
posted by dmd at 7:51 AM on July 17, 2008


oh, this is really addictive. Thank you!
posted by kalimac at 8:12 AM on July 17, 2008


Is there a Home Depot plugin? I want a light olive papyrus-textured sage skull motif for the study.

Isn't there a company that blows up jpegs and such and splits them into sections only for one to hang up on wall rather mosaic-ly? I can't remember if I saw this company referenced here or somewhere else. My searches came up with zip.
posted by danep at 8:47 AM on July 17, 2008


This tool will be very helpful in the future. Compared to creating tiling BGs in Photoshop, this app wins hands down!
posted by Meagan at 8:53 AM on July 17, 2008


This is a great find, thanks for sharing!
posted by wundermint at 9:02 AM on July 17, 2008


Isn't there a company that blows up jpegs and such and splits them into sections only for one to hang up on wall rather mosaic-ly?

You thinking of the rasterbator? (Or here; not sure which is right).
posted by inigo2 at 9:08 AM on July 17, 2008


B
I
N
G
O

inigo
posted by danep at 9:18 AM on July 17, 2008


Posteriza just blows up jpegs and splits them into sections. It's like Rasterbator but no dots. I think Rasterbator is better for art and Posteriza is better for photos.
posted by BeReasonable at 10:01 AM on July 17, 2008


You thinking of the rasterbator? (Or here; not sure which is right).

Not quite. rasterbator doesn't just blow up and split, it also grows the pixels (more than the image as a whole). (Not a graphics expert, so I may be misunderstanding or misexplaining.)
posted by DU at 10:10 AM on July 17, 2008


Or what BeReasonable said.
posted by DU at 10:11 AM on July 17, 2008


The presentation is nice, but I prefer Escher Web Sketch. It has more configurable parameters and doesn't require login. Plus you can download it and run it locally.
posted by lekvar at 10:17 AM on July 17, 2008


Neat. I just fell into a .me domain (awinneris), so more toys the better! I just need to, I dunno, figure out 1) hosting and 2) content. But hey, having a background and a domain is a start!
posted by robocop is bleeding at 10:20 AM on July 17, 2008


Is this project related to MeFi's own taz?
posted by Nelson at 11:23 AM on July 17, 2008


I'd kill for an OSX app that would let me do this. Double-kill if it let me enter in a character from a font instead of picking an image from a list. That, combined with the crazy world of dingbat/pic fonts, would surely rock.
posted by verb at 12:06 PM on July 17, 2008


Reminds me of when I discovered the offset filter in photoshop back in '99.
posted by squalor at 12:21 PM on July 17, 2008


this is so good. thanks for posting.
posted by theora55 at 2:01 PM on July 17, 2008


You're making some great ones, taz. I just "liked" a bunch from you.
posted by Dave Faris at 2:09 PM on July 17, 2008


Hi, Nelson! It's not related to me, but I do like it. I haven't been doing patterns for quite a long time now, but this toy is definitely making me groove like it's 1999. :)
posted by taz at 2:09 PM on July 17, 2008


jimmythefish: check out rollout. They make and print custom wallpaper. (Disclaimer: I know the two who run the company).
posted by chupacabra at 3:16 PM on July 17, 2008


taz is, was, and will forever be the reigning queen of the tileable textures.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:37 PM on July 17, 2008


I thought this was boring. you get to pick between a bunch of colours and a handful of Preset Patterns? - boring.. I mean whats the point of those preset patterns?

I wanted to upload or design my own pattern.
posted by mary8nne at 6:39 AM on July 18, 2008


Next version, I guess.
posted by Dave Faris at 11:59 AM on July 18, 2008


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